The Fuld Leadership Program
Fuld Fellowships
Katie Stump
Biographical Sketch
Reflections on the Fuld Fellowship
Road Trip (Crystal Bailey and Katie Stump's trip to NOLA)
Incorporating Social Responsibility into Daily Life
Biographical Sketch
Katie Stump is a woman who clearly values the importance of balance and perspective. She has already had a wide variety of experiences in her personal life, her academic life at Oberlin College, and her professional life before coming to the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing..
Katie grew up in Virginia and always knew she wanted to work in healthcare. This desire was solidified when, at age 16, she developed a strong faith, which reinforced her commitment to helping people. In college, she chose to study pre-med but she also developed her artistic side with classes in studio art and dance, which she minored in, thus demonstrating balance between science and creativity as well as the intellect and the physical.
Katie’s junior year in college proved the turning point tha t brought her to nursing. A series of surgeries allowed her to experience health care from the patient’s side. She was deeply impressed by the nurses who cared for her and years later; the nurses are the ones she remembers as her healers. That same year she saw the world from yet another perspective when she went abroad to Kenya. There she was able to do an independent research project studying the local medicinal plants. Also in Kenya, Katie volunteered at an orphanage for children whose parents had AIDS. One of Katie’s close family member’s passed away from AIDS and so volunteering with different AIDS awareness organizations has become very important to her.
A winter intensive in alternative medicine strengthen Katie’s understanding of alternative methods of healing and holistic health, both of which fit with Katie’s world view. Her experience in Kenya and interest in alternative methods of healing lead her to pursue degrees in global public health and nursing.
It is very important to Katie to learn and have an active mind. After finishing at Oberlin with a degree in biology, Katie taught science in an experiential educational school in Alabama. Throughout college, she tutored and taught dance to inner city children. She enjoyed the work because “I feel they teach me so much.” Volunteering with Habitat for Humanity, Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital, the Free Clinic of Central Virginia, and other organizations have all furthered her desire to help others and emphasized the incredible importance of reaching out to those in need. Working as a residential aide/delegated nurse with mentally and developmentally disabled adults for four years has taught her “about simplicity and the important things in life” and piqued her interest in mental health. She chose the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing largely because it had the Fuld Fellowship. To her, this demonstrated that the school highly values public health, and most importantly that the school is committed to social responsibility and action. The school is sure to benefit from Katie’s enthusiasm and wide variety of interests as much as she will from the nursing program.
Reflection on the Fellowship
As an Emory nursing student and Fuld fellow, I have had many opportunities to expand my volunteer and learning experiences. The nursing school, Emory’s larger campus, Atlanta, and several places scattered in the U.S. and globally were and are the setting for these opportunities, which include traveling experiences, local volunteer endeavors, and leadership activities.
In the beginning of the Fall 2005 semester, Hurricane Rita and Katrina had affected many. I worked with local aid organizations providing relief to those displaced in the form of sorting donated supplies and answering phone calls of those affected. Later during Fall break, a group of Emory nursing students and I spent four days in New Orleans and the Bayou, working with the Common Ground Collective sharing with those affected by both hurricane Katrina and Rita (passing out diapers, food, and water; administering basic care; and hearing people’s stories). It is amazing to see so much love and compassion mixed with the detached sadness that comes with losing loved ones, ending years spent in a particular home, and a rearranged, unpredictable immediate future. Though those we helped were comparatively few, I felt it perhaps most important to bring back and share people’s stories and experiences, and in this way inform several, thereby indirectly bringing aid to many.
Two other traveling experiences, one to Eleuthera, Bahamas and the other to Kingston, Jamaica, taught me a great deal and reinforced my desire to help others through healthcare. On the Eleuthera trip, a trip graciously funded by the Hubert Fellowship, I learned about faith-based approaches to nursing in a small island community and educated high school students on substance abuse and sexual health. In Eleuthera, I met visionaries and had time for reflection. I wrestled with the growing realization of the difficulties that my career choice would bring me to and with the intense feeling of “rightness” in this career choice. In Kingston, Jamaica, I worked with the Missionaries of the Poor, a Catholic brotherhood, by providing wound care, physical assessments, hygiene care, and relief to homeless adult, pediatric, and infant populations. This opportunity was funded by the Fuld Fellowship and presented itself as part of the fall 2005 NRSG 594 International Healthcare Systems course.
Actively engaging in and encouraging the building of community is very important to me. Several local volunteers have helped me become a part of my community. Some of the volunteer activities I have been involved with include sorting medical supplies for MedShare, a wonderful organization that recycles medical equipment and gives it to those with need, participating in a hand care clinic for senior citizens at Wesley Woods Hospital, providing education on and taking blood sugars and pressures of homeless persons at the Mercy Care Clinic, and delivering meals to those who cannot leave there homes for medical reasons through Project Open Hand. Two months ago, I joined the Oakhurst Presbyterian Church, which I have attended for most of my time in Atlanta. Oakhurst Presbyterian Church provides several opportunities for volunteering, of which I have particularly valued tutoring local school children and participating in endeavors of the Peacemaking and Justice Committee.
As a junior representative my junior year and co-president my senior year of EISNA (Emory international Student Nursing Organiziaton), I have been able to build my leadership and organizational skills. As an EISNA junior rep, I developed a Pakistan earthquake relief project, which involved selling shares for a winterized shelter through the organizations MADRE and Shirkat Gah. I also helped plan World AIDS day events in December 2005. As a junior nursing student, I became an intern at the Lillian Carter Center for International Nursing (LCCIN), which is closely associated with EISNA, for the Spring of 2006. As co-president of EISNA, I had the opportunity to help with Lunch n’ Learn speakers, global health conferences and seminars, volunteer activities, and fundraising events. I organized nursing students for the Prison and Jail Project(P&JP) march in September 2006. Though I learned about P&JP while volunteering for a month that summer at the Koinonia Farm, Oakhurst’s Peacemaking and Justice Committee is closely affiliated with the project, which struggles to improve inadequate and unjust conditions that permeate many of South Georgia’s prisons. With other nursing students and members of the Peacemaking and Justice Committee, I helped in educating, informing, and providing travel opportunities for nursing students to participate in the School of Americas’ (now known as of 2001 the “Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation”) Vigil. A final major project of EISNA in 2006-2007 was a Heifer Foundation fundraiser, for which EISNA raised a great deal of money. My experience with EISNA has amazed me with the abundant displays of generosity of people’s hearts, time, and passion for those who are underserved or suffering injustices.
I am continually grateful for the opportunities that being a Fuld fellow has provided me, for the support of strong, empathetic, and motivated professors and students, and for the focus on social responsibility that Emory emphasizes and the rich experiences that consequently follow.
Emory and the Fuld fellowship have greatly expanded my definition of nursing. Now more than ever I realize that nursing lies at the intersection of my commitments to providing healthcare, serving underserved populations, promoting peace and justice, being aware and acting upon global concerns, educating, promoting environmental protection while trying to live closer to sustainability, and understanding and practicing holistic care.
In my first two years at Emory, I have realized that the benefits of the Fellowship are far encompassing. These include being:
- welcomed by a strong and devoted group of scholars who are energized and committed to many social issues,
- offered the opportunity to participate in local and international health care activities while learning from national and international healthcare experts,
- able to participate in different local and wider community service projects,
- guided by a mentor whose actions consistently demonstrate social responsibility and who serves as a steady resource to all the Fulds, and
- supported and encouraged by professors who have traveled similar roads as the ones we are on now.
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